Artists in Conversation

On the opening day of A Green And Pleasant Land, three artists from the exhibition – John Davies, Melanie Friend, and Simon Roberts – present talks about their work and join a panel discussion with exhibition curators Greg Hobson and Brian Cass.

Artist bios:

Melanie Friend is a photographer known for using the tension between images and sound to document conflict. Friend was nominated in 2012, and again in 2013, for the Prix Pictet, a global award in photography and sustainability. Her photographic series Home Front, featured in the exhibition, reflects on ‘the perennial seductiveness of war’, but as experienced on the home front, rather than in the conflict zone.

John Davies is one of the world’s most important landscape photographers producing large scale, highly detailed images that unpick the social and political materiality of the urban landscape. Shot from a high viewpoint and often taking in vast areas, his photographs are analytical and considered, a document of the history of human impact on the land. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Royal Academy of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2008, he was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize

Simon Roberts’ work deals with our relationship to landscape and notions of identity and belonging. His large format photographs are taken with great technical precision, often from elevated positions. The distanced vantage point allows the relationship of individual bodies and groups to the landscape to be clearly observed, and echoes the visual language of history painting. He’s had solo shows at the National Media Museum, Bradford, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, and been included in numerous group exhibitions